Rufus Scientific Ltd.

Rufus Scientific Ltd. Finding the Opportunity

The Biomedical Mutual Organization

Two biotechnology cliches of the 21^st century.

The productivity of pharmaceutical R & D is falling. Investment in research and in product development climbs every year, but at best the rate at which new drugs are launched is static. Genuine innovation has been falling for two decades.
Investment in innovative, new biotechnology projects is at a 20-year low. Investment in established companies continues, but translating the bench breakthroughs of today into tomorrow medicines has slowed, in Europe has almost halted.

Many organizations have looked to solve this problem. The NIH 'Critical Path Initiative', many university and medical centre's Translational Medicine programmes seek to take biomedical advances further towards products and treatments. But a growing band of people see this as too little, too bureaucratic, too slow. Increasingly those outside the established, largely government funded R & D process are moving to discover and develop medicines on their own.

Many non-profit organizations, mainly medical charities, are moving from passively providing funds when scientists ask for them to actively pursuing new medical ideas, and providing funds to test them in the clinic. Some of these programmes are 'Venture Philanthropy' - philanthropic groups providing funds to for-profit organizations to achieve a goal they both seek. Rufus is researching the extent of this phenomenon, and hope to publish some results of that research later in 2011.

The most extreme version of non-profit medicines discovery and deevlopment is the self-help movement, what I have termed the Biomedical Mutual Organzation. See these two editorials

for some initial thoughts on this.